by Andy Graham
De Lette rested his glass on his chest and slurped the drink out of it like a dog, revelling in the fact he was alone. As the alcohol sucked the moisture out of his tongue and gums, a shout filtered up from the streets. The police were out in force tonight. The resistance refused to lie down, to take the history they were being offered. He’d been standing on this balcony when he’d first heard them chanting his name. There had been an unexpected flush of pride, a prickle of hairs along the back of his neck. He had been surprised at how quickly the protesters had rallied behind the Unsung hidden amongst them; soldiers shouting for the reinstatement of the man who had un-instated himself. He’d taken the plaudits with a smug satisfaction, made a point of listening every evening over a glass of fine Mennai whisky. He’d almost regretted not just retiring instead of staging his disappearance. The thrill had soon faded. The banners that fluttered above the milling heads no longer bore his misspelt name (errors that usually turned him into a cup of milky coffee), but carried demands the protestors must know could never be met.
The Silk Revolution had been a useful tool to get him what he wanted. Now, he wanted the sheep to slink back to their homes so he could enjoy his disappearance undisturbed. This way was safer. No one would think to kill a dead man, especially not his ball-bearing obsessed friends in Mennai that had helped trigger the revolution.
De Lette started the bench rocking again and scratched at a rash of spots on his inner thighs. He’d never been sure if grown men should be seen on a rocking bench. It was an odd feeling, allowing himself such an indulgence without his every action being dissected and analysed, without an aide prompting him on this, that or the other.
“Screw what anyone else thinks.” He drained the glass, his face splitting into a grin. “They can rot in all the hells.” His time in the public eye was over. A life free of the opinions of friends, family and the fools he led awaited him. His weight and sartorial inelegance were no longer their problem. And the longer he was away from people who considered things like this to be an issue, the happier he was in his own skin. He stamped his feet into the balcony. Pushed the bench harder. The movement was reassuring and there was no one watching. “Screw you all,” he shouted up to the sky. “Every last one of you.”
High above him, sun-fans blinked, slow and ponderous. There were more of them than stars tonight, red dots weaving across the sky. And as he watched, one of those points of light became a thought: Could the sun-fans be hacked?
He’d been told they couldn’t. The same people had also told him the machines were fine just days before they’d developed their latest glitch. A glitch no one could isolate. Maybe he should send some of these scientists and technicians to the new research camps. The genetic research they were doing there was uncomfortable enough to teach even the worst of the slackers a lesson.
No matter. Should the sun-fans fail, it would consolidate his hold over Hamilton and that silly secret society of his. The bench slowed to a standstill. The hot breeze teased the hairs on his bare legs. All he had to do now was find the location of this other copy of Rick Franklin’s video. Not even Taille had known where that was, no matter how hard he had been hit. The president rattled the ice around in his glass. He’d find the video, wherever Franklin had uploaded it. Then, he was going to up the stakes.
A sun-fan shifted in the heavens and winked at him.
28
Rose Franklin's Monster
Beth pulled her black coat tight. Freezing air swirled around her ankles as her shoes crunched on the frosted grass. Winter had chased the embers of summer away. The cold stung her nostrils. Chilled her from the inside. This was what she supposed people meant when they referred to taking the airs and the benefits of a bracing walk in the countryside. With burning ears and wet snow that soaked you from the feet up and hid the animal shit? Miles from the warmth and convenience of the city and even further from progress? It sounded to her like something that had been dreamed up by a tourism agency. She could imagine the slogan. ‘Rural escapes for the urban and urbane.’ She didn’t know what annoyed her more: the people who dreamed this idiocy up or those that swallowed it.
To one side of her, the remains of some balloons hung limply off a bare tree branch. Multicoloured and flaccid, the dirty rubber twitched in the wind. On the other side, one window of the long, thatched cottage had been broken from the inside. Wind whistled through a hole in one of the panes. A slim metal box lay amongst shards of glass, two halves of a pencil sticking out of the snow. These things must mean something. Everything meant something to somebody. But Beth was more interested in the dark-haired woman squatting by a tree.
Beth rammed her balled fists into her coat pockets and waited. Thryn was speaking in soothing tones, her hand held out the way you would to a wounded animal. Cajoling hadn’t worked, neither had bribes. It was a world away from the screamed count to three that had been a fixture of Beth’s own childhood; her scarlet-faced mother waving her crooked index finger around as if she were trying to shake it free. Beth wanted to drag the howling child out from behind the trunk and slap some manners into it. That was not the solution, she knew that, and she wouldn’t do that to Rick’s child.
It had been two weeks since she had last seen him. Surrounded by police cars and government vehicles, she had watched Captain Lacky lock the doors of the converted laundry van. The smell of diesel had been rank in the air, the distant plop that was a fixture of any large garage loud and insistent. There had been a squeal of a fan belt, a rattle of a ramp and then the van was gone. She had scurried up to her office to follow its progress on the dragonfly-lens cameras mounted on the sun-fans. The ones Rick had been working on. The irony would not have been lost on him. The vehicle had wound its way under the towering arch of the Gunpowder Tower and sped past the protesters thronging the streets, none of whom had any idea who was being smuggled out of the city. It had been her tribute to both the man she loved and the life she would never have. And now she was watching the life he would never get back.
Rose threw something at her mother. Thryn wiped dregs of snow and mud off her coat. The wailing stopped to be replaced by pleading sobs to be left alone. Thryn straightened up, curly hair bursting out of its ponytail and Beth caught a glimpse of the shiny burn marks under the woman’s coat cuffs.
“She’ll come out,” Thryn said, joining Beth. “Give kids time and space to grow, and they’ll surprise you with what they’re capable of. It’s much healthier than the approach your cities are now applying: entrance exams and full-time education by two years old.”
“Would you rather kids sent to a quarry at that age or on street corners turning tricks?” Beth asked. “How about as medical experiments? Soaking up the bullets in battle, maybe? Or stuck in the mines?”
An artery throbbed on Thryn’s temple. “Too soon, too close to the truth and too loud,” she said with a glance over her shoulder.
One red-rimmed eye was watching them from behind the trunk. A scuff of a shoe. A hiss of breath and Rose clambered up the tree. It seemed to scrape the low grey sky blanketing the village. Not even the drones and sun-fans were visible today. The little girl sat amongst the branches, staring at the women. Trails of steam snaked from her nostrils.
Thryn cleared her throat. “I appreciate you making the visit to tell me what really happened to Rick, and why he’s not coming back. Some would say that you’re here to gloat. I’m not that,” she paused, eyes flicking to one side as she rummaged for the right word, “cynical. I would rather believe in everything than nothing. Either way you stand to lose, but my way you at least start out with something to lose.”
“I’m here because you deserve better than just a message,” Beth said. “And Rick mentioned in passing that you’re averse to electronic communications.”
A smile ghosted across Thryn’s face. “And you’ve told me everything?”
“I’ve told you more than anyone else will,” Beth said. “Hold on to that belief before you lose anything else.”
; “Anything else? More than my husband and her father?”
“Yes.”
Thryn’s fists clenched. “If Rose wasn’t here—”
“You’d have punched me?” Beth finished. “I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“No, but I know Rick.” Beth smiled and stamped the snow off her shoes, wiggling her toes. “Xandria, his first serious girlfriend, was blonde, willowy, precociously busty and as stubborn as a rock. She also had the EQ of a brick. In some ways, she was a cut-out-and-print teenage boys’ fantasy. In other ways, she was a glossy nightmare.”
“Why is this important now?”
“All three of us look very different. So I asked him what his type was once. He said—”
“Strong,” Thryn cut in. “Here, here and here.” She tapped her head, heart and hand. “Something to do with an old legend of this area.”
Beth’s face creased into a smile. “I don’t know the story. Yes, he looked for strength. The three of us, Rick’s ex-partners, are similar where it counts. We are strong.”
“I am not his ex.” This time, Thryn really did look ready to hit Beth.
“Of course. My apologies. I just hope you never will be.” She smoothed down the front of her coat. As Thryn had said, Beth wasn’t here to gloat. “Strength,” she repeated. “You should nurture that trait in Rose. She’s going to need it. We all are.”
Thryn thrust her hands into the opposite sleeves, hugging herself as she watched her daughter. Rose clambered higher. A branch cracked under her feet. As a child, Beth had been fascinated with the idea of doing what Rose was doing. But where Beth had grown up, there hadn’t been trees to climb and only the thieves had owned ladders.
(There had been an old set of gallows. But not even Beth had wanted to clamber up those to see if the rumours were true: that the hangmen had kept a tally by nailing a thumb from each victim to the top of the cross beam. One bone was said to still have a ring on it. The ring was a wedding gift from a man who had later been forced to hang his wife.)
Beth’s fascination had deepened when her mother had told her that a girl — never woman, always girl — should climb nothing but the stairs, and only then when the lift wasn’t working. So Beth had spent the rest of her childhood carving her own thief’s ladder to where she wanted to be. She had promised herself that one day she would have her own tree, too. A giant one, to remind her of what she had never had. And damn her mother but would she climb it.
The low thrum of an engine starting broke the silence. A lean strip of a man got out of the black car next to the open gates. The soft chatter of a radio spilled onto the road as the door opened.
“I need to go,” she said. “If I can, I’ll get you more news.”
“Why did you come?”
Beth stopped mid-turn. The damp between her toes was creeping up her calves. She was cold, irritable and hungry. And, despite her recent confessions to Rick, seeing Rose and Thryn together unsettled her. Had Rick been right about her and kids? Who had she been scared for? Her unborn kids or herself? Or was it that she couldn’t justify bringing children voluntarily into a world as messed up as the one they lived in? A world full of people that surprised her on a daily basis as to how twisted their morals were and how low their responsibilities could sink. A world she was going to change for the better.
“I told you why I came,” Beth replied.
“No, tell me everything. Why are you here?”
“To see what Rick gave up. What he sacrificed.” What I turned down, she thought.
Thryn laughed, a low throaty sound that had the bodyguard twitching his lapels open for whatever he had hidden there.
“And now you’ve seen his home and his family, you think you know that? Maybe I got you wrong. Maybe you do want to gloat.” Thryn’s laugh soured. “Thank you for your visit and your time, but I think you have a lot yet to learn about the people you wish to rule, Ms Laudanum.”
A whistle split the air. Rose dropped out of the tree. She thumped into the snow in a tangle of limbs and joints and curls and rolled to her feet. A pair of dogs crashed out of the pigsty towering over the cottage. Hackles raised and growling, the dogs flanked the girl and her mother. Rose stamped up to Beth, fists clenched by her sides. A second bodyguard tumbled out of the car. He fumbled for his radio as Beth waved the men off.
One of the dogs barked at her. They smelt of shit and aggression. The hairs on her neck stood on end. Odd that an animal humans had created from a wolf could instil such discomfort in people. Could she use it to her advantage? She would have to get round the city-wide ban on animals first. One of the dogs laid its ears flat back on its head, tail bristling.
“Thank you for the advice, Thryn,” Beth said, still watching the dog. “I have some for you and your daughter.” She turned her gaze on the girl and beckoned.
Rose stood her ground. She looped her fingers into one of the dog’s fur. “I heard you talking with Mummy. You gonna tell me to be strong? I am strong. I’ll bash you on the nose.”
“No one should have to tell anyone to be strong,” Beth said, wondering how her security team would deal with a five-year-old girl intent on ‘bashing her on the nose’. “That advice should be redundant. But you’re still too little to understand why it works for some to foster weakness in others.” Beth wasn’t sure how much Rose had understood. She didn’t care anymore. “The advice I have is much simpler.” She knelt on one knee. The damp soaked through her trousers in an instant. Beth looked deep into Rose’s bloodshot eyes. “Never trust anyone in a suit.”
“Not even you?” the little girl replied, eyebrows meeting over her nose.
“Especially not me. Goodbye, Rose Franklin. I look forward to our next meeting.” Bethina Laudanum dipped her head to Rose, a fraction of a bow. The child watched back, wavy brown hair framing a face that didn’t know whether to scream or sob.
29
Epilogue
(Fifteen Years Later)
She’d learnt to write on paper; her grandfather had taught her. ”It’s a direct link to your soul,” he’d said. This was before the government had started rationing paper. They’d claimed they were saving the environment and now a generation of people could barely hold a pen. Rose had never taken to typing or pawing at a computer screen – it felt too impersonal. She’d never got the feeling that paper was watching her, either.
On a set of shelves to one side, a tower of first generation screens nestled next to stacks of documents. Some were as crinkled and discoloured as old skin, others fresh and sharp. One of the bundles was knotted together with a silk scarf. Rose had heard rumours that the government still used paper, that it was easier to shred and burn than delete digital records. She had thought it a conspiracy theory. Yet another fairy tale waiting to be eviscerated. But now? Now she didn’t know what to believe. Neither did she believe the decision they were forcing on her.
The chair opposite tilted, hissing as it cushioned the movements of the interviewer. “I can’t make this choice, no one should have to,” Rose said and wiped a tear from her cheek.
The two women were sitting in a room in the sub-basement of a former hospital. It still had the faint scent of blood that no amount of antiseptic scrubbing had been able to remove. The hospital had been retasked in the Silk Revolution, known in whispers as the Purges. Rose had been five that year. It was the year her father, Rick, hadn’t come home. A decade later, the rejuvenated building had finally opened.
The announcement was still vivid in her mind: a holistic symbol, a new beginning of a robust, transparent government, where the rights and the will of the people would be muscularly enforced. She snorted quietly. Fluency in doublespeak seemed a prerequisite to holding any kind of public office, these days more than ever.
The hospital floors above ground had been gutted and rebuilt, new flesh on an old skeleton. The subterranean levels, the floors most people hoped they wouldn’t see, weren’t quite so sparkly and interactive. Clean tiles, stain
ed drains and obsolete taps huddled alongside bundles of zip-tied cables, ID scanners and wall-screens. It was a cluttered compromise between old and new.
The interviewer cleared her throat, her pale skin a stark contrast to her oil-black hair.
“I’m sorry,” Rose said. “I haven’t been sleeping well. It’s difficult at the moment, I can’t get comfortable.” Her hands drifted to her stomach.
“A mistake was made. Your condition was misidentified. For that, you’re owed an apology.” A cough. A pause. “In normal circumstances, we may have been able to find a solution. Even for you. However, you appear to have been trying to avoid us again.”
“That’s not true.”
“You’ve missed more appointments than you’ve attended.”
“I didn’t.”
“I have the records.” The woman gestured to her screen. The light coming off it lit her face a lurid green.
“They must be wrong,” Rose said. Desperate.
“You signed off on these records yet you claimed your absences were all slips of the mind, that they were accidental.”
“Yes. No! It was only accidental at—” She clamped her mouth shut.
“At first?” The woman had a smug look on her face.
A steady drip of water marked time in the background. Rose counted the drops and looked past the blue eyes that were fixed on her. That gaze had haunted her for as long as she could remember, since the day she discovered her father wasn’t coming home. She focused on the heavy wooden door at the back of the room instead. Its original metal handle was now stiff with disuse.